Dear Clara: —Maude, Lottie, and I will be down Sunday if nothing prevents. Thanks for the invitation.LovinglyE.M.A.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
1913 postcard: A melon field in Montoursville (plus ginseng farming)
Monday, March 13, 2023
1959 Fleer baseball card showing the "Ted Williams Shift"
- Down memory lane with 1983 Topps Baseball Sticker Album
- Collection of Phillies ticket stubs
- Baseball-themed advertisements from a 1953 Phillies scorecard
- Inside the 1973 Spartanburg Phillies program
- Some Phillies Fever from the Bicentennial summer of 1976
- It's been five years since Harry Kalas, the Voice of the Phillies, died [2014 post]
- Steve Jeltz's greatest day (Phillies 15, Pirates 11)
- Connie Mack has some advice for the 2013 Philadelphia Phillies
- For Opening Day, great Phillies hairstyles of the late 1970s
- Ches Crist, baseball player
- It's Opening Day! Do you have Phillies Phever?
- Philadelphia Phillies spring training photos from March 1984
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Book cover: "The Wolf in Olga's Kitchen"
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Two postcards mailed by my
great-grandmother Greta
Sat a.m.Off for Capri, a nice warm day. Shops open at 8, so I have already been in there. Woke up early. You would love it here! Met some nice people on tour. Glen Ridge, N.J., couple I have talked to alot. No real young people. Lots of Americans here.Love,Grandma
The second card show Piscadera Bay Club in CuraƧao, Netherlands Antilles. Apparently it's fun to relax on the cannons there. This card is dated April 1, 1966, and Greta mailed it to her daughter, who she oddly addresses as "Mrs. Adams Ingham" (my grandmother Helen was long since divorced at that point). This message states:
How are you? Hot weather Wed. & Thur. On ocean to-day so cooler — just right. Went in bathing & heard lecture about Jamaica & Haiti & a travelogue. What about perfume for you? Not heard. No parka around. Still meeting new people. No rain.
L---,
Mother
Sunday, March 5, 2023
"Satan's Bid for Your Child" and where have I heard all this before?
"Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program."The half-dozen bills, filed by a cast of GOP state representatives and senators, come shortly before the launch of Florida’s legislative session Tuesday. Other proposals in the mix include eliminating college majors in gender studies, nixing diversity efforts at universities and job protections for tenured faculty, strengthening parents’ ability to veto K-12 class materials and extending a ban on teaching about gender and sexuality — from third grade up to eighth grade."
- "The truth is that many parents do not know what is happening in our public schools. Hence, I am going to be very frank tonight and spend myself to save your boys and girls."
- "Have you ever been taught evolution?"
- "Do any of your teachers wear pant-dresses?"
- "Have you ever heard the American way of life, the establishment, and capitalism criticized by a teacher?"
- "Have you been asked to read such books as Of Mice and Men, Soul on Ice, The Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye, or any other book that includes cursing?"
- "That battle is not just to save a country; it is to save your children!"
- "Satan is after your child. He has pointed every gun in his arsenal at the soul, body, and mind of your child, and he is basically doing it through the school room."
- "During the years of this extensive effort to use our educational system to help change the American way of thinking, a key propaganda gimmick used to keep communists, socialists, and other undesirables on teaching staffs was the cry of 'academic freedom.'"
- "Many of you do not know what your kids are reading. You have not checked. You have no idea, so I have to tell you. I'm going to open a few of the books. I will not say the bad words; I'll just spell them."
- "Television and radio programs by the dozens which have traditionally been for good solid music now have on their programs such guests as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I can't sing, I don't know much about music, but I know that is not music!"
- "We must get back to decency. Rock music is ruining our young people and overwhelming our country with communism. What can we do about it? Here is what we must do: 1. Teenagers, destroy every record, picture, and magazine you have that has anything to do with these revolutionary singing groups. Don't give them away. Burn them! Break them! Destroy them!"
- "Sensitivity training is sex education encouraging students to express all points of view freely. They also use four-letter words."
- "Get your child into a Christian school. I mean it."
- "It is time we called a national emergency on the devil. We've got to do it. Let's save our children!"
- Vintage, foreboding religious tract: The Mark of the Beast
- "Atomic Explosion and the End of All Things" By H.E.M. Snyder
- 1976 booklet on UFOs, occult from Southwest Radio Church
- "The Women Who Knew Jack Hyles" (by David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, Sept. 5, 2021): "Each of these testimonies agree in major points that should cause any Bible-believing preacher to reject Jack Hyles as a gross hypocrite who was unqualified to be a pastor and as a cult leader rather than a true shepherd under Jesus Christ."
- "Let Us Prey: Big Trouble at First Baptist Church" (by Bryan Smith, Chicago magazine, Dec. 11, 2012): "Multiple websites tracking the First Baptist Church of Hammond have identified more than a dozen men with ties to the church — many of whom graduated from its college, Hyles-Anderson, or its annual Pastors’ Schools — who fanned out around the country, preaching at their own churches and racking up a string of arrests and civil lawsuits, including physical abuse of minors, sexual molestation, and rape."
Friday, March 3, 2023
Great links: "Do youz want dippie eggs or eggie bread?"
- my story: one's favorite soap opera.
- night fishin: from Sunbury ... Building fires at the Susquehanna River at night so you can fish for carp. The fishing area was first seeded with hard corn in the afternoon, then the hooks were baited with sweet corn upon returning at night. The two to three foot carp were taken home and buried in the garden for fertilizer.
- slidin' board: the children's park or playscape item that kids slide down. To the rest of the world, it's a slide. To the coal region, it's a slidin' board.
- tamayta or tamayda: tomato
- warsh, worsh: wash, usually the laundry. (I use "warsh" all the time!)
Monday, February 27, 2023
From the readers: Hatchy Milatchy, library tales, Maude Adams and more
WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy: Anonymous writes: "Hatchy Milatchy was magic. When the gates would open at the beginning of the show, my brother and I would be on the floor as up close to the TV as my Mom would let us and for that hour every morning life was magic! Was it an hour or less, I can't recall. The kid has become an old lady."
"I started reading Martin Short's autobiography on vacation this past summer, but didn't quite make it to the end (a couple chapters left). It was good and I need to finish it. I find it hard to sit and read at home. I suffer like you do from the inability to stay awake more than 15 minutes when I read.
"Beverly Cleary's books were some of my favorites as a child as well, especially Runaway Ralph."My mother read Dr. Seuss and The Berenstain Bears to me and I have fond memories of that."I had a run during college where I read a lot of Stephen King (and Richard Bachmann). I went through them pretty quickly, reading for hours at a time."I belonged to a Science Fiction book club during college as well, so I ended up with quite a few books I wouldn't have normally read simply because I didn't return the refusal slips in time."I've been thinning my book collection recently and came upon the paperback version of The Three Investigators in The Mystery of Monster Mountain and thought of you. You've probably already read it and/or have it, but if you want it, drop me a line."
Thanks, Tom! And congratulations on spelling The Berenstain Bears correctly, even if that spelling is from an alternate universe than the one in which we grew up. Regarding your kind offer, about a year-and-a-half ago I came across someone who was reading the Three Investigators books to her grandchildren (or maybe it was her nieces and nephews), but she lamented that they were impossible and/or too expensive to find. So I sent most of my mine to her; that's where those books needed to be.
And, while we're on the topic, one final Three Investigators note...The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle: Tom from Garage Sale Finds writes: "I found this page because I was looking for those graveyard endpapers. I still am a fan of the series that I started reading about 1970-71. The end of book #2, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, has a great, spooky scene in an old cemetery. That chapter and the conclusion that follows are some of the best writing I ever have read in a children's book!"
1970 calendar tucked away inside 1936 book about Blacky the Wasp: Anonymous writes: "Black Sabbath's debut LP was released on February 13, 1970. I am so glad this handy source clarified the date."
Snapshot & memories: Our little bookstore: Tom from Garage Sale Finds, who has been super-generous with comments this month and has a blog you really should check out, writes: "I just recently winnowed my own Amazon bookstore collection for similar reasons [to the reasons that Joan and I left Amazon circa 2015]. Too many listed that would actually result in a loss after Amazon's take. The books I have listed now easily fit on half of a small bookcase. Organizing by color is actually genius, I wish I'd thought of it when I had my full volume going. It was always a pain searching through my tubs to find that one book that sold. It was always the last one in the tub."
Finally, while it doesn't relate to a specific blog post, Christelle in Belgium shared some kind thoughts in early February after receiving a postcard from me through Postcrossing: "Hello Chris! Thank you for the nice postcard you sent me. I had a look at your blog and your cats' pictures on Instagram. ... About your blog, as you, I love old pictures and postcards! I like the story they can tell or the one we can imagine!"